Executions and Prison Safety?

A distraction from real solutions

It sounds logical – once someone has a life sentence, they have nothing left to lose by killing in prison, right? Wrong. People serving life sentences must make prison their homes forever, so preserving even tiny privileges makes a big difference to their quality of life. That is why studies and the real-life experience of wardens and corrections officers have found that the death penalty fails to deter murder in prison.

Keeping Prisons Safe: Voices From the Front Lines

"I've been in this system for over 40 years. I’ve been held hostage and been through multiple prison riots. If someone told me that the death penalty would protect me as a corrections officer, I would be offended. Safety inside prisons depends on proper staffing, programming, and effective reintegration of inmates back into society. The death penalty does not safeguard anybody."1

— Calvin Lightfoot, former corrections officer, warden, and Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services for the state of Maryland

"A well-managed prison with proper classification and staffing can create incentives for lifers to behave while segregating and punishing those who are a threat before violence ever occurs. Our prison system already knows how to do this. The reality is that the death penalty is not, and never has been, a deterrent. Prison safety depends on proper staffing, equipment, resources and training. Certainly the money spent on trying to put someone to death for over 20 years could find better use in addressing those practical needs of our correctional system."2

— John Connor, former chief special prosecutor for the state of Montana for 21 years, prosecuting five death penalty cases involving prison homicides

What incentive do life-sentenced inmates have to keep from killing again in prison?

I don’t believe there is a single qualified prison warden in this country that wouldn’t trade the death penalty for more resources to keep his or her facility safe. The death penalty system is just a drain on those resources, and it serves no purpose in the safety of the public or prisons.

— Ron McAndrew, former warden, Florida State Prison, who presided over eight executions

Life without parole can be "bad, horrible, or extremely horrible," as one warden put it. For those few who are a danger to others, there are facilities for long-term custodial segregation - a tiny cell where even meals are eaten alone. The bleak and harsh reality of life under custodial segregation offers great incentive to avoid that fate.

People serving life must make prison their homes forever. They will never again have the thousands freedoms many of us take for granted – an extra hour in the sun, decent food, the touch of another human being. The miserable environment of prison means lifers have to preserve even the tiniest privileges they can get.3

If people serving life had "nothing left to lose" by killing in prison, the same thing would be true for death row – you can’t be executed twice. Yet thousands of death row inmates live in prison for years and even decades without committing another murder in prison.

The death penalty is no more of a deterrent for murder in prison than outside prison. If it were, one would expect more prison murders in non-death penalty states. Yet states without the death penalty have a lower homicide rate among prisoners than states with the death penalty.4

There is no evidence that the threat of the death penalty prevents inmates from harming corrections officers. Between 2005 and 2014, there were 24 corrections officers in the United States murdered by inmates. Every one of these murders occurred in a jurisdiction with the death penalty.5

Even prisoners can be wrongly convicted

The same problems that plague all death penalty cases are exacerbated by the fishbowl environment of prison. Prisoners may be more easily persuaded to give false testimony in exchange for better treatment, increasing the risk of wrongful convictions.

Case in point: Joe Amrine was serving a short sentence for check kiting in Missouri when he was convicted of a prison stabbing. His trial attorney conducted no investigation. The three inmates who testified against him said later that prison officials pressured them to finger Amrine. A prison guard consistently said he saw one of the three prison "witnesses" fleeing the crime scene. Amrine spent 17 years on death row before state courts concluded he was actually innocent.

The Use of Resources: Preventing Prison Murder

The death penalty is shown to cost millions more than a system of life in prison. Those extra resources would be better spent preventing prison murders at a fraction of the cost.

One California prison lowered fatal stabbings by 94% simply by removing the sheet metal shop from its prison industry.6 Other prisons have removed blind spots, increased security in high-risk areas, and placed dangerous inmates in special units to maximize staff protection.

How often do people serving life sentences kill in prison, anyway?

Research shows that those serving life sentences are less likely than the average inmate to break prison rules.7 In one survey of correctional workers, 89% reported that lifers presented fewer disciplinary problems than the general population, and 92% said lifers were more cooperative.8

Prison murder overall is extremely rare. The murder of a corrections officer is even more rare. Many states haven’t had a single corrections officer killed in the last 30 years. Prison staff are 82 times less likely to be murdered by an inmate than the average person outside.9

6. W. Wolfson, "The Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty upon Prison Murder," in Hugo Bedau, The Death Penalty in America, 1982.

7. Johnson, loc.cit. "A substantial body of empirical research supports the claim that lifers are less likely, sometimes much less likely, than the average inmate to break prison rules, including prison rules prohibiting violence (see Sorensen & Wrinkle, 1998; Johnson & Dobrzanska, 2005; Cunningham, Reidy & Sorensen, 2005; Cunningham, Reidy & Sorensen, 2008). These studies cover the Federal prison system as well as several state prison systems, including Missouri, Texas, Florida, Indiana, and Arizona. Findings uniformly bear out the conclusion that lifers and other long­-termers typically are not a danger to others in the prisons in which they reside. Note that these studies examined more than 60,000 prisoners, over 3,000 of them serving sentences of life without parole."

8. “A Report: Life Term Prisoners in the United States,” Arizona State Prison, 1974.

9. As of 1997. The inmate-on-staff homicide rate in 1997 was 1 per 1,000,000 inmates, compared to the U.S. murder rate of 82 murders per 1,000,000 population. Bureau of Justice Statistics, cited by Death Penalty Information Center, Understanding Capital Punishment: A Guide Through the Death Penalty Debate, March 2003, p. 33.

Some say there are solutions to the prolonged suffering of murder victims' family members when it comes to the death penalty – fewer appeals, less scrutiny, a cheaper system. But a shorter and cheaper system means more mistakes, more people like Ray caught in the system or even worse, executed quickly – before they can prove their innocence.

— Vicki Schieber, whose daughter Shannon was murdered, and Carolyn Leming, whose son Ray Krone was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit

When you look at our system of justice, it is the best in the world, but it’s imperfect. I think that at some point in our history we have probably executed an innocent person, and that’s irreversible. And as wonderful as our system is, it is still made up of men and women who are imperfect and I worry about that, especially when you look at the levels of representation at the state level. I just think we can do better as a nation.

I would like to state right here and now, when a mistake is made it's hard to undo. The criminal justice system does not have very good remedies for errors... It was a hell of a lot of people that took to unbuild a simple mistake that occurred in the local precinct when my son was first arrested.

— Harold Hohne, who supported the death penalty until his son was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated

There is a growing recognition that the death penalty simply can't work. It's a complex system that arbitrarily selects defendants for death and creates more stress and appeals, even as it is plagued by serious error. Each new exoneration reminds us of the unacceptable possibility of wrongful execution.

What does the death penalty do for us? Without any deterrent value, it certainly is not an effective law enforcement tool. Effective law enforcement and crime prevention requires precious resources that are being wasted on this ineffective and broken program.

A new set of victims is created among the family members of the condemned who watch. I wondered most about the mothers who saw their sons being put to death. Some would just wail out crying. It’s a sound you’ll never hear any place else, an awful sound that sticks with you.

After a murder occurs, victims may have a variety of perspectives on exactly what will bring them justice or healing. But we can all agree that preventing the murder in the first place would have been the best use of state resources.

Indeed, because every one of us is human and all of us are actors in a fact-finding mission, if just one of us makes an error, jumps to a conclusion, or acts on a false assumption, an innocent man can be condemned to a guilty man's fate.

As a 33 year law enforcement veteran I've worked all types of cases with all types of police officers, judges, and attorneys. I've come to realize the system is composed of imperfect human beings who, unfortunately, carry their emotions and bias into their decision-making. It has rendered the death penalty an unfair and inhumane punishment.

Overall, we just need to evaluate the whole death penalty issue. If it's going to take millions and millions of dollars per inmate and years before we can execute someone, that's a major policy issue we need to look at.

As probably the only attorney in the state of Montana who's successfully sought and secured a conviction in a death penalty case, I know firsthand the turmoil it took on the surviving family member in that case...

— Dennis Paxinos, Yellowstone County, MT, explaining why he was not seeking the death penalty in a recent case

The cost, county officials say, can be an unexpected and severe budgetary shock – much like a natural disaster, but without any federal relief to ease the strain. To pay up, counties must raise taxes, cut services, or both.

Do we want more lawyers arguing in court, or more cops on the street? Do we want longer trials, or better victim services? Do we want to kill an unlucky few (not necessarily the worst), or do we want to help troubled kids before they end up hurting someone? In the real world, these are the choices we must make.

— David Kaczynski, who turned in his brother, the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski

Jurors realize that instead of having to make that terrible decision (voting for the death penalty), they can vote to put someone in prison and ensure that defendant is no longer a harm to society. It makes it easier for them to return a verdict of life without the possibility of parole.

We've heard a lot about statistics today but I am here to tell you that the people who have been exonerated and released from death rows across the United States aren't just statistics. They're human beings, human beings who had hopes and dreams, just like all Americans.

— Randy Steidl, who spent 12 years on death row in Illinois before being exonerated

We don't even know how many children have an immediate family member on death row in the United States today. Worse, we don't know the effect that having a parent executed will have upon their impressionable lives, and cost society may pay, for that impact...these children are all innocent victims of the state's efforts to kill their loved ones.

— Robert Meeropol, who was six years old when his parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed in 1953

It is now nearly seven years since my brother Bob's murder. His killer is still walking the streets. My message and voice are focused on dispelling the delusion that the death penalty keeps us safe. We are wasting millions each year sentencing a few aging convicts to death while thousands more murders each year remain unsolved and tens of thousands of family members like me are left with little hope for any justice.

I've been in this system for over 40 years. I’ve been held hostage and been through multiple prison riots. If someone told me that the death penalty would protect me as a corrections officer, I would be offended. Safety inside prisons depends on proper staffing, programming, and effective reintegration of inmates back into society. The death penalty does not safeguard anybody.

— Calvin Lightfoot, former Maryland Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services

There is a very strong case to be made for a review of our death penalty statutes and even look at the possibility of having life without parole so we don't look up one day and determined that we as the state of Texas have executed someone who is in fact innocent.

The death penalty makes no sense as a law enforcement tool. Any law enforcement officer will tell you that it has no deterrent effect. Coupled with how much time, energy and money we pour into the death penalty system, it is nothing but a burden on prosecutors, the courts and the taxpayers. If we get rid of the death penalty, prosecutor's offices and the courts would be more effective and the public will be safer as a result.

After years spent in Washington, I have become more aware than ever of the government’s ineptness and the likelihood of its making mistakes. I no longer trust the U.S. government to invoke and carry out a death sentence under any conditions.

As a police chief, I find this use of state resources offensive... Give a law enforcement professional like me that $250 million, and I'll show you how to reduce crime. The death penalty isn't anywhere on my list.

— James Abbott, Police Chief and former death penalty supporter, West Orange, New Jersey

While serving as a Prosecutor I allowed myself to believe, based on certain studies, that the death penalty was a meaningful deterrent to crime… I could not have been more wrong…In an effort to exact the ultimate punishment of society's most heinous criminals we have created a labyrinth of laws, procedures and endless appeals which, of necessity, drain precious resources from the legitimate goals of our law enforcers.

From the very beginning, the death penalty makes false claims about how it "helps" victims. We are told that we need the death penalty for "closure" and "justice." But in reality, fewer than 2 percent of all cases end up with death verdicts, so it's simply wrong to act as if the healing process for families must be tied to an execution. Do we really believe there's no justice for the other 98 percent?

...if you make a mistake and execute somebody, it is irrevocable. You don't dig up a coffin in a grave yard and open it up and say I'm sorry, we made a mistake. Our justice system demands more than just that.

— Hon. Gerald Kogan, former Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court and former Florida prosecutor, who sought and upheld numerous death sentences

A well-managed prison with proper classification and staffing can create incentives for lifers to behave while segregating and punishing those who are a threat before violence ever occurs... Prison safety depends on proper staffing, equipment, resources and training. Certainly the money spent on trying to put someone to death for over 20 years could find better use in addressing those practical needs of our correctional system.

— John Connor, former chief special prosecutor for the state of Montana for 21 years, prosecuting five death penalty cases involving prison homicides

I think law enforcement thinks [the death penalty is] a joke and that's probably why 1 percent thinks it's effective. It takes too long and there's too many people on death row that never get put to death.

— Dale Vietmeier, Police Chief and former President of the Allegheny County, PA Chiefs of Police Association

If you do back-of-the-envelope calculations, it becomes clear that no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention. As such, economists who argue that the death penalty works are put in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that criminals are irrationally overreacting when they are deterred by it.

Continuing to spend millions of dollars to take a murder defendant who has already been caught and subject him to death rather than life without parole will not prevent the next murder. Redirecting money to more vigorously apprehend and prosecute armed robbers, rapists, burglars, and those who commit gun crimes will prevent murders and save lives.

The reality is that death penalty cases are so complex and so labor intensive that low-paid attorneys actually have to choose between putting on an adequate defense and losing money on the case... A system that puts a person's life on the line cannot hang its hopes on the sheer luck that a few extraordinary good samaritans will always be there and be willing to make these kinds of sacrifices.

We have not viewed [repeal of the death penalty] as an impediment in the disposition of murder cases…As a practical matter, we have really seen no difference in the way we conduct our business in prosecuting murder cases.

— Edward Defazio, Prosecutor, Hudson County, New Jersey, noting that prosecuting cases and securing guilty pleas was not any more difficult since New Jersey repealed the death penalty

But these days, there's also a strong economic argument for doing away with capital punishment. With California facing its most severe fiscal crisis in recent memory... it would be crazy not to consider the fact that it will add as much as $1 billion over the next five years simply to keep the death penalty on the books.

— John Van de Kamp, former district attorney and attorney general of California

Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice. But here the end result is the end of someone's life. In other words, it's a government system that kills people.

— Richard Viguerie, known as one of the "creators of the modern conservative movement"

So I say to you at this particular point that based upon what I've seen after more than 40 years of dealing with these cases, is that capital punishment has no place in the judicial system of any state... because it is fraught with error, it is fraught with mistakes.

— Hon. Gerald Kogan, former Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court and former Florida prosecutor, who sought and upheld numerous death sentences

If the millions of dollars currently spent on the death penalty were spent on investigating unsolved homicides, modernizing crime labs and expanding effective violence prevention programs, our communities would be much safer.

One thing we now know is how incredibly expensive the death penalty is. Studies in Colorado have shown our death penalty uses a tremendous amount of resources, millions more than would be spent if our state’s ultimate punishment were life without parole.

During my 30 years as a Maryland prosecutor, I saw the death penalty system up close. I sent 12 defendants notices to prepare for a capital trial, tried six of them, and obtained death penalty verdicts in two. The crimes were cruel and the killers were wicked. I believed that if we are to have a death penalty, they deserved it. I have changed my mind.

— Hon. Andrew Sonner, former Maryland State's Attorney who used to support the death penalty

After the funeral is over, a lot of your supporters disappear. You are still left with this pain, and so, instead of using the money to kill more people, it would be awesome if that money went to support victim services to do outreach and to train homicide detectives.

[On TV] there's so much attention paid to certain murders that you assume the families going through their tragedy are getting support and help. [When] my son, Dennis, was murdered in 2002, and I learned how little support there actually is...Many survivors face trouble just getting out of bed, much less figuring out where to find and fight for grief counseling and other needed services.

Society is not equipped to handle death penalty cases because of resources. Large law firms are not willing at this stage to take these cases on, at a cost of many thousands of dollars, in order to make sure that if the public wants the death penalty, it is not administered with arbitrariness and caprice

I left the state's attorney's office more than ten years ago, but I still remember the agony of attempting to make the fundamental decision whether to ask a jury or judge to condemn someone to death. Our system invests an individual prosecutor with unfettered discretion to make that decision. I now believe that to do so rationally and fairly is beyond human capabilities.

— Hon. Andrew Sonner, former Maryland State's Attorney who used to support the death penalty

It has been said that the men on death row are inhuman, cold-blooded killers. But as I stood and watched a grieving mother leave her son for the last time, I questioned how the sordid business of executions was supposed to be the great equalizer.

The death penalty divides families at a time when they need each other most. Instead of finding comfort with one another, we find ourselves handcuffed to the criminal justice system, stuck in a process that keeps replaying the worst time of our lives while providing us almost nothing in the way of real support or healing.

— Marie Verzulli, whose sister Catherine was murdered in upstate New York

I don’t believe there is a single qualified prison warden in this country that wouldn’t trade the death penalty for more resources to keep his or her facility safe. The death penalty system is just a drain on those resources, and it serves no purpose in the safety of the public or prisons.

— Ron McAndrew, former warden, Florida State Prison, who presided over eight executions

[The] death penalty is given in fewer than 1 percent of cases, yet it sucks up millions and millions of dollars that could be put toward crime prevention or victims’ services. What I wouldn’t give for a tiny slice of those millions to give my grieving daughters some professional help to process the death of their brother.

Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like posttraumatic stress...For me, those nights that weren’t sleepless were plagued by nightmares. My mother and wife worried about me. I tried not to share with them that I was struggling, but they knew I was.

— Dr. Allen Ault, Former Warden and Director of the Georgia Department of Corrections, who oversaw five executions

The money N.C. spends on the death penalty for trials, appeals and executions could instead be spent on violence prevention and offender intervention programs such as the Juvenile Justice Project at Campbell University. Preventing violent crime is something that would truly honor our loved ones.

I do know, though, the effect of the death penalty on the staff working in the death house. I remember quite clearly PK Kelly who... talked about how he had to kill people and he was never sure whether the person he was killing was innocent or guilty. It had a terrible impact on him and the other workers in the death house. Many of them drank excessively.

— Stephen Dalsheim, former warden for 20 years at Sing Sing Prison, New York

The criminal justice system is hard enough on survivors. When the death penalty is added to the process, the survivor's connection to the system becomes a long-term and often multi-decade nightmare that almost never ends in the promised result. I have watched too many families go through this over the years to believe that there is any way to make the system work better.

I always supported the death penalty... [But] I concluded that we should eliminate the death penalty wherever we can. Primarily because we cannot guarantee that an innocent person will not be executed.

Despite the best intentions of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and jurors, innocent people have been convicted and sentenced to death. The margin for error with the death penalty is too great.

The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.

As I presided over Massie's execution, I thought about the abuse and neglect he endured as a child in the foster care system. We failed to keep him safe, and our failure contributed to who he was as an adult. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to kill him, what if we spent that money on other foster children so that we stop producing men like Massie in the first place?

— Jeanne Woodford, former director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the former warden of San Quentin State Prison

The costs can’t be borne by smaller counties particularly, so if the crime occurs in a large county you might be charged with the death penalty, in a smaller county you’re not. That raises some significant questions about fairness.

My own view on capital punishment is that it is morally justified, but that the government is often so inept and corrupt that innocent people might die as a result. Thus, I personally oppose capital punishment.

The death penalty throws millions of dollars down the drain – money that I could be putting directly to work fighting crime every day – while dragging victims' families through a long and torturous process that only exacerbates their pain.

— Police Chief James Abbott, who changed his mind about the death penalty after serving on the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission

It is a hoax on the families of murder victims, on the public at large and on myself as a prosecutor in this state. It is a punishment that does not deliver the justice it promises, prolongs the suffering of those who have lost a loved one and does nothing to actually enhance public safety.

— Edward DeFazio, New Jersey prosecutor who changed his mind about the death penalty after serving on the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission

[The] death penalty is given in fewer than 1 percent of cases, yet it sucks up millions and millions of dollars that could be put toward crime prevention or victims’ services. What I wouldn’t give for a tiny slice of those millions to give my grieving daughters some professional help to process the death of their brother.

There was this big old-line officer, a well liked fellow, and he oversaw the executions. Afterwards he’d get very, very drunk and not come in for several days. It’s terrible, terrible – I get very emotional thinking about it. I certainly don’t like terrorism or murder but there has to be a better way than putting men to death.

There is no foolproof way to determine guilt. The system we have is a wonderful system for all kinds of cases, but it's driven by human beings and they're not perfect even when they're doing their very best. That's why I say that we have to abolish the death penalty; an execution can't be undone.

— Sam Millsap, former District Attorney of Bexar County, TX, who used to support the death penalty

Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime. If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong. But the reality is the system is not perfect – far from it.

— New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, as he signed into law a bill to repeal the death penalty despite his previous support for the death penalty

While so many families like mine are kept in limbo without any justice in our case, we talk about investing more money in the death penalty for just a few cases...the death penalty is a charade. I want the money spent on the death penalty to go toward investigating my son’s murder. I want those resources to go to crime prevention, so that no more mothers lose their children.

— Pamela Joiner, whose son, Jumar, was murdered in 2008, in a case that is still unsolved

“Whether or not one receives the death penalty depends upon the discretion of the prosecutor who initiates the proceeding, the competence of counsel who represents the defendant, the race of the victim, the race of the defendant, the make-up of the jury, the attitude of the judge, and the attitude and make-up of the appellate courts that review the verdict.”

The money that we spend on the death penalty would be much better spent funding support groups, providing ongoing counseling to survivors, ensuring that every person who is murdered is able to be buried with dignity, and doing everything we can to prevent the tragedy of murder from ever taking place.

I have experienced countless violent crime scenes... Of the accused murderers my fellow officers and I have brought to justice, I do not believe any of them was deterred in the least by Nebraska’s death penalty.

We bow to no one in our support for tough law enforcement policies. We believe, however, that tough law enforcement policies must also be smart and effective. After much study and deliberation, we have come to believe that Maryland's death penalty is neither smart nor effective. Nor, because it is necessarily imposed in an inconsistent manner, is it tough.

— Letter urging repeal of the death penalty signed by 51 current and former Maryland law enforcement, March 13, 2007

If I were ever killed in the line of duty, I would never, ever want my wife or children to have to suffer the way the families who testified before me have suffered. Instead, I would want to know that the person who did it was behind bars for life, and that my family had the services they needed to heal and the financial support they needed to live without further sacrifice.

— Police Chief James Abbott, who changed his mind about the death penalty after serving on the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission.

[T]he commitment of time, money and man power necessary for a capital case is enormous and it takes from other cases. But I think what bothers me most is that it offers to the families of the victims and the survivors a false sense of closure.

As a conservative, I celebrated the vote [to repeal the death penalty] as a reflection of our values to be efficient and judicious with taxpayer dollars and to rid our government of programs that don’t work.

Our criminal justice system doesn’t always mete out justice and fairness in neat little packages – sometimes it’s a little rough. It’s not something you can compute with a calculus or with any kind of certainty as to who belongs and who doesn’t on death row.

And some people say the system worked because I got out. The system didn't work because I got out. I'm just going to tell you how I got out. I exhausted all my appeals to get out, which means the next step, if the death penalty was in effect, I would have been killed.

— Robert McLaughlin, who was convicted of murder in NY that he did not commit

I can testify from experience that our current system is most unjust for the victims and their loved ones. I can only hope to save other families from the grief of the never-ending appellate process. I promote the substitution of the death penalty only with a life sentence that truly means life in prison with no possibility of parole.

I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... [P]eople who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

From my personal experience struggling for good mental health care for my son, I believe family survivors of murder victims would be much better served if the resources wasted on the death penalty were used to provide quality mental health care for the victims and survivors of violence.

— Bonnita Spikes, whose husband was murdered, and who works with other homicide survivors in Baltimore

You may know that my father was gunned down by an assassin's bullet in 1968. My grandmother was gunned down in 1974 by another person. Certainly, I should be one to support the death penatly, but our family has always been against the death penalty.

If we are serious about helping victims' families, we should go ahead and repeal the death penalty, sparing them the agonizing wait for cases to come to an end. Eliminating the death penalty will also save the state money that could be reinvested to provide more meaningful care for the families of murder victims, something I know from personal experience is lacking now.

It is vitally important that our state address the needs of surviving family and friends as we struggle to heal. We know that elected officials who promote the death penalty often do so with the best intention of helping family members like us. We are writing to say that there are better ways to help us. The death penalty is a broken and costly system... and victims' families like ours don't want it.

— Letter urging repeal of the death penalty signed by 49 Marylanders who have lost a loved one to murder, Aug. 19, 2008

As a victim’s father who has been trapped in the labyrinth of the death penalty, and after seeing the real misuse of resources, I am begging our elected officials to do away with our broken death penalty system.

— Bob Autobee, a corrections officer, whose son Eric, also a corrections officer, was murdered by a prison inmate

Many states and even many people who are in support of the death penalty question their support of the death penalty because of the imperfection of our courts. Through DNA testing, we don't always get it right, even with that.

The death penalty makes a mockery of the idea of prevention. Chasing a handful of executions means that countless other crimes go unsolved. It means fewer cops on the beat. It means that those cops will get less training and be less effective....The death penalty drains millions of dollars and resources away from real crime-fighting solutions while it pretends to be that solution.

The millions of dollars and thousands of hours or prosecutorial time that we spend on a handful of capitol case would be much better invested in effective programs to prevent crime and prosecute offenders. The death penalty is a costly distraction from real programs that could help our communities.

I no longer want the men accused of killing my husband executed... I would rather see the death penalty abolished and reparations made to the victims' wives or husbands and to their children. I know how hard it is to go looking for a job, because my job was staying at home and taking care of the home and kids, and my husband was the breadwinner. I have faced that situation, and, believe you me, it's not easy.

So, if it's not a deterrent, if it's not cost effective, if it begets more violence, if it releases a murderer from his earthly punishment, if it puts the victim's family through years and years of reliving the event, if it does not change our life without our loved one, and if it makes us no better than the murderer, what possible reasons could you have, could we have to have a death penalty?

— Bruce Grieshaber, who led the fight to abolish parole in New York after his daughter, Jenna, was murdered

It might be easier to allow the death penalty to continue if it were less expensive than life in prison. If the courts treated rich and poor equally. If it truly was a deterrent. If everyone that was executed was guilty. Unfortunately the sad truth about the death penalty is it is much more expensive. The courts do not disperse justice equally. It is not a deterrent. And sometimes, yes, sometimes they are innocent.

For those who believe in the virtue of limited government and criticize roundly when government does not work well, capital punishment does not meet fundamental conservative standards. Not only is it applied arbitrarily, but our judicial system cannot even figure out how to examine it properly.

When I was a prosecutor there were two other prosecutors in my office that worked on a death penalty case for the entire two years that I was there. Without the death penalty on the books, those two prosecutors could have prosecuted 200 violent criminals each within that time frame. Imagine that, 400 violent criminals off the street -- instead, they worked on a death penalty case that never resulted in death.

The first time I voted for the death penalty, I thought of the law as majestic and that there was very little chance of a mistake…Then you grow up. Look at the DNA evidence – you realize that people can make terrible mistakes.

While well-intentioned people defend capital punishment "for the victims," surviving family members are left to grieve in silence, without access to ongoing services, peer support, or affordable, specialized counseling. Grassroots organizations around the country have sprung up to meet this need, but most of us struggle on a daily basis to remain in existence.

Spending all this money on the death penalty might be worth it - if it actually made our communities safer. But it doesn't… Our communities would be exponentially better off by reinvesting the time, money and resources we spend on trying to get a few people executed into crime prevention measures that work.

The sad fact remains that even today a lab performing a cholesterol test is subject to greater federal and state regulatory oversight than a crime lab generating evidence that can lead to the death penalty.

When even the most capable and hard-working attorneys lack adequate resources to do their job, there is an increased risk that innocent people will be incarcerated, guilty people may never be prosecuted, and other defendants will receive unfairly excessive sentences.

You will be - or should be - appalled at the number of times that crime labs turn out to be providing inaccurate and phony evidence...Sometimes technicians are manufacturing evidence deliberately. Sometimes the science itself turns out to be untrustworthy

...my direct experience prosecuting prison homicides changed my mind [about the death penalty]. I have come to believe that the death penalty is an incalculable drain on our limited criminal justice resources.

As a Superior Court judge, I tried many murder cases, including one death-penalty prosecution, which is still in limbo after almost two decades of appeals. In my 20 years on the bench, I came to recognize the death penalty as inherently unfair, arbitrary, costly and ineffective.

We cannot rely on the system to catch the errors, nor can we rely on the overburdened, not-for-profit organizations to save the ones that are innocent and in prison… Abolishing the death penalty will not ensure no innocent person will be convicted, but it would ensure that no innocent person will be killed by the state.

— Kate Germond, Centurion Ministries, an organization which has freed several innocent people from death row

The assumption is all too often made that all murder-victim family members want the death penalty. The horrible reality for those of us who have lost loved ones to homicide is that nothing that happens to their murderers is going to bring our loved ones back.

The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates.

...the truth of the matter is that if you favor the death penalty, you're not being tough on crime. It has nothing whatsoever to do with, as far as we can tell, as far as anybody can tell, on the affect on crime. Zero. Zip. It's just irrelevant. It's tough on the taxpayers. It's tough on the budget. That's what its tough on.

— Thomas Sullivan, former prosecutor and co-chair, Illinois Commission on the Death Penalty

We've got a system in Kentucky where there's not enough money for public advocates, for prosecutors, for drug courts, family courts, for juvenile services, for rehabilitation programs, and we're using the money we have in a way I think is unwise... Every dollar that goes to our ineffective capital punishment system is a dollar taken away from other needs.

— Jason Nemes, former director of the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts

Conservative Republicans have every reason to reexamine capital punishment. The death penalty system’s additional costs compared to life without the possibility of release are beyond dispute. The trials, with so much at stake, are necessarily expensive and the appeals can take decades because of the real concern of executing innocent people.

There are many people who commit heinous crimes, and I'd be the first to stand up with emotion and say they should lose their lives...But when I look at the unfairness of it, the fact that the poor and people of color are most often the victims when it comes to the death penalty, and how many cases we've gotten wrong now that we have DNA evidence to back us up, I mean, it just tells me life imprisonment is penalty enough.

— U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, used to support the death penalty but now supports repeal nationwide

A trial seeking life without parole is far speedier than a death penalty case and costs far less. By pursuing life without parole sentences instead of death, resources now spent on the death penalty prosecutions and appeals could be used to investigate unsolved homicides, modernize crime labs, and expand effective violence prevention programs.

— Letter signed by 47 California law enforcement officials, March 28, 2008

The best available evidence indicates that, on the one hand, innocent people are sentenced to death with materially greater frequency than was previously supposed and that, on the other hand, convincing proof of their innocence often does not emerge until long after their convictions.

And in my view, you have a better chance at a good system of criminal justice if you don't spend all these million and millions of dollars on the 2% of cases that are death cases and ignore the 98% that are non-death cases.

— Thomas Sullivan, former prosecutor and co-chair, Illinois Commission on the Death Penalty

The state can protect many more officers at a fraction of the cost by adding police, providing the best protective equipment available, and implementing effective policing programs known to reduce crime. The death penalty is simply a distraction from the real issues surrounding public safety.

— Patrick Murphy, Former Detroit And New York City Police Commissioner

California spends $137 million per year to fund our death penalty system. The same amount could instead be used to hire an additional 1,780 criminal investigators or 2,132 crime lab technicians in order to solve more murders.

— "The Silent Crisis in California: Unsolved Murders," a report by California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, April 2010

You're the American people. You sentenced a guy to be executed. You give him a trial, then you send him to me to be put to death. Then later on you [say] that this guy was innocent. You didn't put him to death. I did. I performed the execution. So you might suffer a little. I'm going to suffer a lot, because I performed the job.

— Jerry Givens, who executed 62 people as Virginia's chief executioner from 1982-1999

Don't misread me. You won't find any arguments here about the death penalty being unfair, immoral or barbaric. I don't buy it.... But the issue here is not about the merits of the death penalty. It's about inefficiencies and priorities. As we raise university tuitions out of sight, whack the poor and lay off cops, do we really want to be spending $308 million to snuff out one individual?

There is a way forward that can help all victims. We can decide to stop spending so much money, time, and attention on a handful of capital cases and instead commit to focusing on real solutions to violence prevention and real services that all victims of homicide can benefit from.

I now understand that the death penalty is an ineffective, cruel and simplistic response to the complex problem of violent crime. Our limited resources could be better spent on programs that focus on stopping violence before it starts, such as preventing child abuse and drug addiction – programs that will prevent another child from becoming the next [murderer].

Sometimes I wonder whether people really understand what goes on down here and the effect it has on us. Killing people, even people you know are heinous criminals, is a gruesome business, and it takes a harsh toll… I have no doubt it’s disturbing for all of us. You don’t ever get used to it.

I have no moral opposition to the death penalty- I've prosecuted capital case. But I recognize that it causes a fiasco in the courts, puts victims' families through hell, and is a huge waste of time and money.

We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars on the death penalty in the last decades. And what has that gotten us; one execution. Meanwhile, we’ve had thousands of victims’ families struggling to put their lives together.

The death penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency. Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them while draining millions of dollars from more promising efforts to restore safety to our lives.

— Hon. Robert Morgenthau, former District Attorney for 34 years, New York, NY

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.

— James Fry, former Texas prosecutor who says he is “no bleeding heart” but changed his mind about the death penalty after a man he sent to prison 27 years earlier was found innocent

North Carolina conservatives, liberals and everyone in between should question whether our state government should authorize execution of people when we know, to a moral certainty, that some of them are innocent. There is no principled justification for any conservative to place limits on government power in all other areas, but grant it the power to kill, knowing it will make mistakes.

If my mother were alive, she would be proud that I came forward today. My mother always told me that my job is to make this world a better place to live. New Hampshire would be a better place without the death penalty.